Each patient entered one of three groups of approximately equal size. One group received traditional verum acupuncture. Sham acupuncture was applied to members of a second group. These patients underwent “superficial needling,” in which the needles went only just below the skin and avoided all the target points (known as verums and meridians) identified by professional acupuncturists.

The remaining patients were treated with a combination of medication, exercise, and physical therapy.

The report concluded that verum and sham acupuncture were respectively 20.2 and 16.8 percent more effective than conventional therapy in the treatment of lower back pain. The improvements observed “were significant and lasted long after completion of treatment,” the authors wrote.

Although these findings support the efficacy of acupuncture, they also suggest that the body may respond positively to any superficial needling of an affected area. Acupuncture may not be the exact science some practitioners claim.

The research was funded by German health insurance companies, and has led to a rise in interest in acupuncture in Germany.

The German report’s findings appeared first in the U.S. publication Archives of Internal Medicine, and indicated that lower back pain sufferers may find acupuncture relieves pain more effectively than conventional therapies. The researchers concluded that since sham acupuncture was as good as the traditional verum variety, there may exist “a common underlying mechanism that may act on pain generation, transmission of pain signals or processing of pain signals by the central nervous system.”

According to MayoClinic.com, “it’s hard to create a definite list of the conditions for which acupuncture might be helpful,” because it is difficult to conduct “valid scientific studies” in this area. “However, preliminary studies indicate that acupuncture may offer symptomatic relief for a variety of conditions, including low back pain, headaches, migraines and osteoarthritis.” MayoClinic.com is an a not-for-profit organization that offers a guide and overview of the practice of acupuncture.

According to Stephen Barrett, M.D., the evidence supporting acupuncture as a treatment for a number of conditions “consists mostly of practitioners’ observations and poorly designed studies.” In addition, Barrett warns of the health risks of improperly performed acupuncture. The most recent research he cites dates to 2004. Barrett, M.D. is the founder of Quackwatch, a non-profit “guide to quackery, health fraud, and intelligent decisions," established in 1969.

Consumer Reports magazine began publishing independent research in 1936, and has a May 2006 report on “Pain-Remedy Alternatives” that looks into the efficacy of acupuncture. The article is only available to holders of the $26-a-year subscription.

The apparent success of acupuncture may arise from the placebo effect, and a number of comparable definitions for that term are compiled by Google. The Multiple Sclerosis Society, for example, defines the placebo effect as “an apparently beneficial result of therapy that occurs because of the patient’s expectation that the therapy will help.”

The results of the German team's research into back pain replicate the findings of a 2005 investigation into acupuncture's use in the treatment of migraine headache. As with the back pain study, the migraine research concluded that although acupuncture “was associated with a reduction of migraine headaches compared with no treatment … the effects were similar to those observed with sham acupuncture and may be due to nonspecific physiological effects of needling, to a powerful placebo effect, or to a combination of both."

In 2006, a British investigation into the clinical benefits of acupuncture in the treatment of back pain concluded that acupuncture had a “clinically worthwhile benefit” and has a “moderate” effect. The research was conducted on a smaller sampling of patients than the recent German report, with only 241 subjects. Also, the research did not include a study of sham acupuncture, comparing verum acupuncture with conventional therapies only.

According to Consumer Reports, “a review of the evidence finds that acupuncture doesn’t help people who want to quit smoking.” This short article summarizes the scientific research into this area, and concludes with a number of references suggesting that serious side effects from acupuncture are “very rare.”